Photo: Tero Vesalainen (Shutterstock)
“The internet has a privacy problem,” isn’t a statement that’s likely to shock you. But just because we’ve all lost a lot of what we traditionally think of as privacy, doesn’t mean we need to resort to bad behavior. Case in point: If you’re sharing screenshots of people’s dating app profiles, you need to stop.
I missed the dating app boat, so I’m certainly not someone who’s overly familiar with them. But I do know a thing or two about privacy, and the trend of sharing people’s dating app profiles is the furthest thing from it. It isn’t just unfair to the users who have their Tinder profiles blasted for millions to see—it’s unsafe.
Dating apps require a lot of personal information
Here’s the deal: When someone makes a dating profile on Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, what have you, there’s an expectation to share enough personal information to make it easier to meet other users. That most often includes your name, age, location, school, interests, and, of course, your picture.
People include this information under the assumption it will only be shared to others users on the app, specifically users within the designated radius. Sure, that can be a lot of people, depending on where you live, but it’s a controlled number of people. It’s all users of the same app. You tell all the Hinge users in New York City that you’re 23 and go to grad school, not every Hinge user, and certainly not everyone with an internet connection.
However, when you take a screenshot of this information from someone in your radius and post it on the internet, the number people who now have access is exponential. You’re moving private data from a controlled environment to the entire world, and, for what? Internet points? Fleeting fame? Grow up.
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Poorly moderated forums allow these screenshots to spread
What really brought this to my attention was a post to r/tinder. I won’t link to it here, because, again, there’s no need to further invade someone’s privacy. However, one Redditor posted a screenshot of a Tinder user’s profile to the subreddit, presumably to make fun of them. The post has nearly 30,000 upvotes, with over 40,000 votes in total, and has almost 5,500 comments, many of which roast the Tinder user for their profile choice.
Of course, this is the internet, and cruelness is to be expected. However, this user had their name, age, school, hometown, and picture exposed to a Reddit community with over 5.6 million people. Not only that, I don’t even subscribe to r/tinder: I saw it while browsing r/popular, so it’s impossible to say how many non-subscribers to the sub saw or engaged with the post, as well.
I did see one comment thread speak out against the obvious privacy violations happening here, but most users only thought to make fun of the Tinder user’s profile. Who knows how many took to Google to learn more about them.
It was wrong of the Redditor to post the screenshot in the first place, and we should discourage the practice. But it was also wrong for the subreddit to allow it in the first place. R/tinder does have a policy in place against sharing personal information, but it’s vague:
Images that contain personal information (phone numbers, addresses, Facebook accounts, unique/easily identifiable names, or other similar information) will be removed.
Technically, nothing in the screenshot violated that policy. There was a town listed, but no address, and the name was as common as they come. The policy is limited enough to discourage users from sharing screenshots of DMs with info like phone numbers and home addresses, but lax enough to share things like age and location.
Sharing dating app screenshots puts people in danger
This loophole is a big deal. The info in that post is plenty for a creep to look up this user elsewhere on the internet, potentially figuring out exactly where they live. You shouldn’t feel like you’re doxxing yourself by using dating apps like Tinder the way they’re designed, but thanks to bad moderation on forums like Reddit, the danger is there.
Sure, you could share less info on your profile, but that defeats the purpose. You want to know a little about potential matches on these apps before reaching out. It’s a good thing to know if you’re close in age, in the area, or have similar interests. Honestly, the whole platform is dependent on it.
So, if you’re one to share Tinder profiles on the internet, please, for the sake of everyone’s privacy, stop. After all, nobody wants to date a creep.
